ASVGuy::SWFBlog

Flash CS3: Guilty as Charged

Colin Moock's article at Inside RIA, titled 'The Charges Against ActionScript 3.0' is a must read, especially if you are a Flash developer still trying to migrate to AS3 and find it hard.

The article is really about shortcomings of Flash CS3, rather than AS3, and it has good tips for AS1/AS2 developers.

I agree with 99.9% of what Colin says there.

AS3 made Flash harder to learn. If you are not a Java programmer, I think you'll agree.

I personally don't like Java or ECMAScript, not any more than I like XML. But sometimes you have no choice and all in all, AS3 is a fine scripting language, clearly better than AS2 but with a steeper learning curve, for which most Flash developers don't have the time for.

[I had very high hopes for AS3 until I saw the compiler done in Java. I hoped it would be done in AS3. I still hope there will be an AS3 compiler written in AS3 soon, all Java will be ditched from Flash platform and people will call AS3 the better language and Flash as the platform that replaced Java, accomplished what Java never was able to do (write once, run everywhere, for starters)].

With AS3, Flash got closer to Java developer types, but became harder for the Flash developer types. My understanding was that Flex would handle the Java developer types and RIA end, Flash (the authoring tool) would stay as easy as before. This didn't happen.

One commenter says:

':) this was the same thing we talk to colleagues about the changes to AS3. The think we do is to make some wrapper object witch gives me some of the good old functionality from AS2.'

Colin's article has a getURL replacement AS3 function, which I will start using immediately. Colin says on()/onClipEvent() functions should be back (in an improved form) and Flash should convert to AS3 when exporting. I think that should be the way to go. Flash CS3 already converts timeline code to a class behind the scenes, why not exploit this approach more? Flash, with AS3, should be as easy to use as before, as much as possible. Otherwise lots of Flash developers will be out. (Sure, there may be other, easier to use tools but if Flash authoring tool loses ground, it can't be good).

Another commenter says:

'I think most of us who do AS3 40hrs a week for a living just wrote our own libraries to make this stuff easy again.'

'I don't want to switch to Flex.  If I have to go to flex why not just use silverlight.'

SWF format is now really open...

SWF format has been open since version 3, 1998. It was again May as far I can remember. Now 10 years later, restrictions on using the format is removed, effective as of today, May 1, 2008.

Previous license restrictions were for creating SWF players, creating SWF files was never restricted. I think this was a good idea at the time, nobody wanted multiple incompatible SWF/Flash Players around, also considering the fact that SWF version 3 even had a Java edition player. Now the technology is mature at version 9 - and as I've said 10 years has passed. I personally don't see any danger of multiple browser players gaining ground.

(Another good consequence of this is that you no longer need Adobe Reader to view the SWF specs, Foxit reader now works just fine).

The news came with Adobe Open Screen Project announcement.

Here are relevant links:
SWF Specs at Adobe SWF Tech Center
FLV/F4V Specs at Adobe FLV Tech Center
AMF Specs
ActionScript VM2 Overview (AS3 specs) (PDF)

[F4V is the file extension for HD Flash video, mp4. There's also F4P, F4A and F4B. For playing F4V, Flash player 9.0.115.0 (Flash Player 9 update 3 - MovieStar- released on December 4, 2007) or later is required. Current version of the Player is 9.0.124.0, released on April 8, 2008]

Old news: AIR Beta2, Flex3 Beta2, AMP prerelease and Flash Lite 3

It all happened on October 1st and I kind of ignored them because of all cool news coming from Adobe MAX.

Flash Lite 3 is out and it supports FLV video along with most SWF 8 content. Flash Lite is Flash for mobile devices, phones etc. and video support means you'll be able to enjoy YouTube with your cell phone (of course your phone has to have FL3).

AIR public beta 2 finally supports Windows 2000 and is overall improved. I'm yet to try it. There's also Flash CS3 update for AIR.

Matt Chotin  has the what's new article for Flex 3, and also covers public beta 2. Ted Patrick announced price decrease for Flex Builder 3, SDK pricing won't be changing because it's already free. All I can say about pricing is this: Regional pricing sucks! Thank god 'free' doesn't translate to a low price outside USA. As always, Ted's blog is the place to find Flex news and info.

Adobe Media Player (AMP) is the long waited official Adobe FLV Player. It seems it's more than that with catalogs, favorite shows etc. and offering content protection to content publishers. Requires latest AIR beta2 and I'm yet to install it. So I'll post my impressions later.

There's also Flex Builder for Linux alpha, released on October 2nd. It's definitely good to see Linux support though I'm not actively using Linux but I do plan in the future, especially if Microsoft fails to deliver a decent version of Windows, something on par with XP, nothing like their latest big flop Vista.

And then there's Adobe Inspire Experience design site alpha, you may want to check it out.

Flash 10 and Quake in Flash

Peter Elst has a post titled Adobe MAX Chicago - Sneak Peeks and you can't afford to miss the videos about next version of Flash and C/C++ to AS3 conversion.

Next version of Flash will have a better 'stage' where you can have your video live and you'll need to test your movie less. You've got to see the new tweens, they will become very capable and easy to use. Lastly demonstrated is kinetics - bones built-in to Flash, too cool I won't even attempt to describe here.

C/C++ to AS3 conversion is really cool too. Applications are endless. You can have Ruby or PHP interpreter converted AS3 and actually run PHP code then. You find a sample C++ code, and you can use it in your SWF easily, there won't be language barriers. Demo is impressive with Quake code converted to AS3. This is really something that can change a lot when it arrives.

Thank you Peter for the videos.

Thermo

Aral again has the video. Simply amazing.

In summary, Thermo will be the visual way to create Flex applications, more specifically UIs.

Some say Flash is for designers, Flex is for developers, how will Thermo change this? Actually, the way I see it, Flash is for animations and more creative work, while Flex is for RIAs. Thermo will make RIA creation workflow easier and also will let designers in.

Exciting times ahead!

Flash Player 10 (Astro) and AIF/Hydra

Aral has the video of the astro preview from Adobe MAX 2007 keynote. A must see.

Astro is the codename for Flash Player 10. Revealed features are advanced text layout (with bidirectional languages support), 3D effects (very cool), and custom filters, blend modes and effects. All are impressive.

For custom filters, blend modes and effects, a new image processing language, codenamed Hydra, is announced. You can play with Hydra now, using Adobe Image Foundation (AIF) Toolkit Technology Preview. You'll need hardware acceleration, as software based rendering is not supported yet. Chances are that your video card is one of the supported ones, unfortunately I still use an X550 based card (my CPU is E6600, quite sufficient. I didn't get a better card because I never needed 3d acceleration, till today), so I was only able to read the documentation. Some features of Hydra will not be supported by Flash, hence it's Adobe Image Foundation, not Flash. Don't forget to check Kevin Goldsmith's blog if you are interested in Hydra.

All in all, I see a very bright future for Adobe Flash Player and the Flash Platform. And thank you Aral for the video (BTW, SWX rocks)!

Flash Player 9 Update 3 Release Candidate

Release Candidate (RC) version of Flash Player 9 Update 3 (moviestar) is available for download at Adobe Labs. Probably the last chance to find any bug and report to Adobe before the release.

Tinic Uro has more details than most of us would want to know (If you have heard of Extended, High 4:2:2 or High 4:4:4 profiles and using them, Tinic has some bad news for you).

MAC OS X 10.1 version is not there yet. Real Player 11 beta is still causing problems. Version number is 9.0.64.0.

Flash Player 9 Update 3 Beta 2 (MovieStar): H.264, HE-ACC support

This is huge news for web video and for Flash in general. As a result this has been already covered a lot, but if you are blogging about Flash or web, you cannot skip this kind of news.

Here are some links:

• What just happened to video on the web? by Tinic Uro
• Big day for web video: Adobe announces support for H.264 and HE-AAC in Flash Player, and Moviestar premieres on Adobe Labs by Emmy Huang
• The H.264 Announcement in Black and White by Ryan Steward
• New Flash Player plays MP4s, Quicktime video, even music from your iPod! by Aral Balkan
• The Bomb: Flash Player To Support H.264 Video by Stefan Richter (Flashcomguru)
• Flash Player to support H.264 video (FlashMagazine)

Here are my notes:

• Build number for this version (Beta 2) is 9.0.60.184. Update 3 Beta 1 was released in June (build 9.0.60.120). Release is expected 'later this Fall' (for the northern hemisphere).
• Available at Adobe Labs. Windows installer size increase is around 200 KB, haven't checked the player size yet. Because only browser players are available these new features/codecs won't work inside Flash (which uses an internal player). Update: The toll is around 100 KB.
• H.264 video (ISO/IEC 14496-12, ISO/IEC 14496-10, ISO/IEC 14496-3) and HE-ACC v2 audio support (also hardware accelerated fullscreen video for Linux) is new. Multi-core and hardware accelerated fullscreen video support also applies to the new H.264. I was somewhat expecting a move like this from Adobe, as Silverlight had a strong point about video, but I was, too, surprised as many to see this so soon.
• This is huge because these are industry standard codecs also used by HD-DVD and Blu-Ray.
• We'll be able to play .mp4, .m4v, .m4a, .mov and .3gp files with the new Player (Xvid, DivX not supported). There will be no need to install Quicktime (and I don't) for viewing Quicktime video.
• I'm not sure about the future of FLV format as a container format. But it will be around and current codecs will, of course, be supported at least for backwards compatibility. You can even have H.264 in a FLV but this is 'not encouraged'. I'm a bit sorry about this.
• The new codecs also mean AIR desktop applications will be able to deliver standard HD quality content.

Speaking of AIR, also on the Adobe Labs you can now find beta 1 of Adobe AIR update for Flash CS3 which lets you target AIR from within Flash CS3.

ASV 6 Alpha 1

We have just made ASV 6 Alpha1 available to all licensed ASV 5 users. It's really an alpha release, very incomplete.

Still, we think it will not be totally useless. And with the future alpha and beta versions, we hope our users will help us finding issues (With this alpha1 release, there are so many known issues, we are not really looking for reports from our users).

For example, the AS3 decompile engine integration to ASV is not complete at all (and neither the decompile engine), so you'll see timeline scripts as classes, where each frame script is a method. Most probably you won't be able to see those classes in later builds and each frame script will show on its own frame...

SWF 9 Specs released!

Emmy Huang announced the release of SWF version 9 specs, which includes FLV specs, yesterday.

Changes in the SWF specifications from version 8 are relatively minor compared to contents of the new AS3 actionscripts tag: DoABC. ABC (Actionscript ByteCode) format was made available earlier.

As with SWF 8 specs, you need to agree to the license terms, which mainly prohibits you make use of the information to write your own Flash/SWF player. Also the specs does not include information about AMF3 for FLV files.